


It's Better for Us if You Don't Understand

by waketosleep



Series: I Have Seen the Truth (And It Doesn't Make Sense) [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, FBI agents, Fringe fusion, Gen, M/M, Paranormal, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension, YAGKYAS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:10:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arriving at the scene of a bank robbery to find a guy stuck inside a wall might be the highlight of Agent Brad Colbert's career in the FBI, but when an agent from a mysterious department called Fringe Division comes to take over the case from him, he quickly discovers that things can always get weirder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Better for Us if You Don't Understand

**Author's Note:**

> Written for YAGKYAS 2011 holiday fic exchange, for **spirited_lizard**.
> 
> Recently I've had a strong urge to write a Fringe AU, so imagine my delight when my recipient's wildcard crossover was Fringe. ~DESTINY~ This fic got long, as actiony fusions can and will do, and amazingly I realized about halfway through writing it that it's really like the pilot of a series I may want to continue with. You know, if the ratings are good. Also, no knowledge of Fringe should be necessary to understand this fic, but it's a great show if you should decide you want to watch it. Thanks to **templemarker** for the beta of the ages (even when I went OH AND it's almost 20k) and to **sutlers** and J for cheerleading.

"There is nothing in this entire fucking world that I hate more than late-night bank calls," Ray bitched.

"Look on the bright side," said Brad as they waved their badges at the uniforms guarding the scene, "at least night calls usually mean no hostage situations."

Ray straightened his tie. "All bank robbers should just be shot on principle. Fucking assholes, thinking they're committing victimless crimes. As if there's such a fucking thing. Brad, why are people so stupid?"

"It's to make you seem smart by comparison, Ray," said Brad, and flashed his best charming smile at the lead detective.

She gave him a flatly unimpressed look in return, but Brad was used to that from local LEOs; it came with the cheap suit and government-issue sidearm.

"Did they get into the vault?" Brad asked.

She smirked, which was pretty concerning. "This way, agents."

Instead of leading them into the bank, she led them next door to an empty building with a striped awning. It was for lease but had the general look of a restaurant. There was a hole in the floor in the kitchen.

"They dug a tunnel to get to the vault," she said, shining her flashlight on the top of a ladder.

"What is this, a Wile E. Coyote cartoon?" Ray asked.

Brad looked from the ladder to Ray. "After you," he said generously.

Ray glared. "Fuck yourself, Agent Colbert."

"I'm the senior agent here, Person, and your ass is going down that hole. If it does not, then I will have you reassigned to partner the esteemed Junior Agent Trombley. He needs someone like you to show him the ropes."

Ray glared at him for another second before whipping his tie over his shoulder, checking his weapon, and going for the ladder.

"Good boy," Brad said warmly.

Brad and the detective--Anderson was her name--smiled absently at each other until the ladder stopped rattling. Brad heard scuffling noises and a faint wash of light came out of the hole.

"How's it going, Agent Person?" he called from the edge.

Ray was silent for a minute, which should have been his first clue that something was amiss. "Get down here and look at this," he shouted finally.

Brad studied Detective Anderson's poker face before going down the ladder. It descended ten feet to a rough, rock-studded tunnel that he had to crouch to get through, possibly still getting his hair full of dirt. The end of the tunnel widened enough to accommodate at least three people, though, and Ray stood in the middle of the space. Brad straightened up to his full height and moved around Ray to see where he was shining the flashlight.

Suddenly he understood Detective Anderson's weirdness. He was also glad he hadn't eaten in a while.

"Homes, I think this shit is above our pay grade," said Ray calmly.

Brad tilted his head at the scene: an extended forearm in a black sleeve and glove, the fingers curled like claws; a knee and part of a shin; and just the nose and one wide, bloodshot eye of a man's face were protruding from the concrete in front of them.

***

By ten AM, agents had been posted at the tunnel and vault to protect the scene and Brad was starting on his second pot of coffee as he stared at the spread of photos and reports from the scene at his desk. Ray had fucked off somewhere, possibly to corrupt Garza for a while. Whatever kept him out of Brad's hair while he tried to make sense of the case notes.

It was like the guy had been trying to walk through the wall but had gotten stuck. Which was crazy on levels he wasn't interested in exploring.

His mental hamster-wheel running was interrupted by the approach of Agent Schwetje, who was trailed by some Junior Agent Brad had never seen before. More new blood. He bit back a sigh and stretched his back a little as he got out of his chair.

"Agent Colbert," said Schwetje, "this is Special Agent Fick from DHS." He indicated the child in a tie he'd been towing along and Brad was forced to spend a second re-evaluating.

"Agent Colbert," said Fick, extending his hand to shake. His grip was firm and his face serious. "I've heard a great deal about you."

"Hopefully some of it was good," said Brad absently.

Fick smiled, a quick twitch of his lips. "Actually, you seem to be held in a high regard at the Bureau."

Brad smiled back tightly and turned his attention back to Schwetje so he'd get the fuck on with it. He could see Ray homing in on them from the corner of his eye and figured they had twenty seconds before he interfered.

Luckily, Schwetje got to it. "Agent Colbert, Agent Fick here just flew in from Boston on assignment, from a task force we're running out there in conjunction with DHS. He's coming in on your new bank case."

"What?" said Brad. "Why?"

Schwetje looked predictably uncomfortable at being asked a direct question. "Orders from on high," was all he said before extracting himself from the situation. Brad and Fick were left staring at each other.

Ray's arrival was timely. "What the hell did Encino Man want?"

"He was escorting Agent Fick," said Brad, waving at Fick before glaring down at the photo spread on his desk.

"Encino Man?" Fick parroted, and Brad was going to actually, literally kill Ray one day. "Why do you call your SAC that?"

Brad opened his mouth to repair things but Ray spoke over him. "Like that shitty movie. We think the Bureau found him in Encino. Frozen in the ice. Riding a mastodon."

Fick stared at Ray silently for a second before turning his attention back to Brad. "I need your files on the case."

"Which ones?" Brad asked.

"All of them," said Fick. "My division is taking over this investigation."

Brad's hackles rose instinctively. "And what division is this? Why do you want a bank robbery case?"

Fick raised an eyebrow. "I think you know why, Agent Colbert," he said, pointedly not looking at the images of the agonized man trapped inside a wall that lay on the desk. Then he looked slightly uncomfortable. "I'm with Fringe Division."

Brad jumped on the sign of weakness. " _What_ division?"

"Fringe," said Fick crisply, straightening his shoulders. Fine.

"You guys like bank robberies?" Ray asked, leaning back on the edge of his own desk.

Fick looked over both of them coolly. "We 'like' bank robberies when they involve the perps getting stuck inside solid walls." He paused. "This is the third in a string, and the first they've messed up."

"Yeah, I guess getting wedged inside a foot of concrete is a pretty silly mistake," said Ray.

"The third?" Brad asked, attention sharpening. "Where were the others?"

Fick hesitated. "One in New York and one in Chicago, both in the last two months."

"And now LA," finished Brad. "Moving west with alarming speed. But how do you know Han Solo here is part of the same crew that did the first two?" he asked, tapping one of the photos with the end of his pen.

"Information pertaining to this investigation is classified beyond your clearance," said Fick.

"This guy's no fun, Brad," said Ray. "I quit helping Trombley with his HRT application for this?"

The paralytic thought of Trombley being allowed near hostages tied up Brad's brain for a moment, and he couldn't come up with a witty rejoinder. Fick was saying something about needing a write-up by the end of the day and going to the scene when Brad tuned back in.

"Wait," he said. "Wait. I am very good at bank robberies."

Fick gave him a shrewd look.

"I mean catching bank robbers," he corrected. "But I've never seen anything like this. I want to assist on the case."

"You can't," said Fick. "Anyway, I'm based out of Boston."

"You have to stay here for at least a little while," said Brad. "Agent Person and I are available to assist."

"We are?" said Ray. "Speak for yourself, homes, I got three open cases and two reports to work on."

"And you're terrorizing the juniors instead," finished Brad. "I'll take you to the scene," he told Fick.

Fick visibly wavered. "All right," he said finally. "Let's go. You two were the first agents on scene, you can walk me through it."

***

Fick was interesting to watch at the scene; he walked through every square inch of the bank vault and spent a long time studying the rear wall, where the lower back, ass and left heel (in a heavy workboot) of the man in the wall jutted out. He pulled something that looked like a fancy phone out of his pocket and held it up for a while, frowning at the screen. Then he went down into the tunnel and did the same thing on the other side. Finally, he stowed the device and pulled out his actual phone once he'd clambered back up the ladder.

"Get that guy out of the wall, and try not to damage the body," he said, holding his phone up to his ear as he gestured at the hole.

"How do we get him out?" Ray demanded.

Fick waved him off. "Jackhammer. I don't care. Just be careful with the body, gents." And he walked out the front of the vacated restaurant, talking to someone in Boston.

They broke a gurney trying to wheel the body out; the concrete that still encased most of it was heavy as hell. God knew how Fick was going to get the thing onto a plane.

***

Brad went home that night, cracked a beer, and put South Park on the TV while he opened his laptop and logged into the Bureau network. His searches for Agent Fick, Fringe Division, his own case and related cases in New York and Chicago--every angle he tried to investigate led him to a password-protected wall he wasn't privileged to pass.

He stared at it for a while as he killed a second beer, went through a third while watching more South Park, and then finally sighed and set to hacking the network, covering his tracks carefully.

Two hours later, Brad knew quite a bit more about the Fringe Division and Special Agent Nathaniel Fick, but he wasn't any less confused.

***

In the end, it turned out Fick _couldn't_ get the body onto a plane, not with the concrete attached, and Brad and Ray watched him pace angrily for a while and make a thousand phone calls before he finally wheeled on Brad and said, "I need a medical examiner."

"Ask and ye shall receive," said Brad, picking up his desk phone. "Carisalez," he said when the ME picked up, "do you have some time for a guy stuck between a rock and a hard place?" He rolled his eyes at the response. "Yeah, he's dead. I only bring you the dead ones."

"Maybe next time you should bring him flowers, too," suggested Ray, spinning in his chair.

"Nah," said Brad, hanging up, "then he'd start expecting better treatment." He turned to face Fick, who looked bemused. "We keep him in the basement," said Brad. "If that reinforced gurney's still kicking around, we might want to use that."

"Despite the preservative powers of concrete, I've been keeping John Doe in the morgue," said Fick.

"Great," declared Brad, and led the way to the elevator. He didn't invite Ray along, but he never seemed to need to.

Down in the bowels of the LA field office, Carisalez sighed at the body.

"I really, really need it undamaged if you can," said Fick for like the fifth time. "We want to get an ID without resorting to DNA."

Carisalez gave Fick the side-eye. "You're asking a lot, Agent, but I'll see what I can do. Now get out. Let the magic happen." He shooed Fick away from the body and then snapped his fingers at Brad. "Junior Mints."

Brad made a disgusted noise.

"Brad, I thought you loved me."

"I can get you mints," said Fick dubiously.

"Excellent. Get a soda too and I'll guarantee you a full set of usable fingerprints, at least. No diet!" And then Carisalez set to ignoring them and started muttering to himself about saws.

It took him hours, but he called Brad's direct line when he was done. "He's got a face and everything," said Carisalez proudly over the phone, audibly chewing Junior Mints. "Handsome motherfucker. I had to use one of those wet saws you use for cutting tile, with the water jet."

"That's great, Carisalez, I don't give a fuck what kind of mad science you had to do to it but we'll be down there right away."

Fick jumped out of his chair on the other side of Brad's desk at that, pulling out his phone. "He's done? We can make an ID?"

"Go see for yourself, Agent Fick," said Brad.

Ten minutes later they stood over the body, which was pretty much free of the concrete except for the occasional stubborn chunk that seemed glued on, and Brad was delicately propping the head up for Fick to photograph the face with his phone.

"Perfect," said Fick, emailing the picture, and Brad glanced down at the body and got his first good look at the face.

"Jesus tittyfucking Christ!" he said before he could stop himself.

"What?" Ray and Fick demanded at the same time. Carisalez was washing up over in the corner, humming to himself.

"I know this guy," said Brad.

It was Sergeant Tony Espera, who Brad had mostly called 'Poke' when they'd been off in the sandbox.

"He was discharged in '04 after a disciplinary thing," said Brad, staring at Poke's dead face in shock. He'd seen his panicked, lifeless right eye fifty thousand times in person and photograph over the last few days and the thought of that combined with the new recognition made him vaguely sick.

"You were military?" Fick asked.

"He was a Marine," said Ray. "We both were."

" _Recon_ Marine," corrected Brad. "I left not long after his discharge and went back to school, but we didn't keep in touch. He's married," he added as an afterthought. "Has a kid." Was married. Had a kid. "Family was living somewhere around Arlington, last I heard."

"Spell his last name for me," said Fick, who was typing out a text now. His phone rang two minutes later and he nodded like the person on the other end could see it, said, "Yes, sir," several times, and then hung up and looked at Brad. "You're coming back with me, Agent Colbert. We want you to help interview the family. My SAC is advising Agent Schwetje of the plan."

Ray gave Brad a single, desperate look and Brad said, "I think Agent Person should come, too. He's my partner and despite all appearances, he's very useful in an investigation."

He met Ray's protest with a cheeky grin.

Fick looked them both over. "Fine, if your field office can spare both of you for a bit," he said. "Let's go pack up your case files; we're wheels-up at 1800 tonight. You can do your write-up on the case on the plane," he added with a smile.

"I can't wait," said Brad.

***

The plane took them straight to Arlington; Ray entertained them the whole flight by singing along with the Jay-Z and Tupac playing through his noise-cancelling headphones as he hammered away on his laptop keyboard. Brad had his hands full between tuning Ray out, doing a half-assed job of Fick's precious case write-up and sneaking looks at Fick while he was distracted by the spread of folders in front of him.

According to the files Brad had been looking at, Fick was not quite three years younger than him and had gone from Dartmouth straight to Quantico, which effectively meant he'd been with the Bureau almost as long as Brad had, working in the northeast while Brad had happily taken a posting back in California. His superior at Fringe Division was an Agent Ferrando who appeared to answer to the Director himself. Brad had learned a lot about Fick and the organizational structure of Fringe Division, but had only gotten a glimpse into what their caseload looked like. If this bank thing was as much the usual bullshit for Fick as he made it seem, Brad clearly stood at the edge of the rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, Ray kept serenading the tiny plane about his empire state of mind.

***

Espera's house was modest and clean and they'd gotten a dog sometime in the past few years; it was knee-high and shaggy and it wagged around Brad's legs as Teresa let them into the living room.

"How's your daughter?" Brad asked as he and Ray settled on the couch. They'd made Fick stay in the car.

"Good," said Teresa distractedly. "She's at school right now. Why are you here, Brad? Not that you're unwelcome, but it's a bad time."

Brad suddenly wanted to rub at his face. "I'm here on FBI business," he said, and Teresa's hand went to her mouth as she dropped into the armchair.

"Is that--oh, God," she said. "Oh, God."

"How long since he's been home?" Ray asked.

"Almost a week," she said. "He had a line on a job, he said he'd be back on Sunday, though, and it's, I haven't been able to get him on his phone, and--"

Brad regretted that he wasn't allowed to tell her what had happened to Poke, that his body was in their custody and she couldn't have it. "Have you guys been having money issues?" he asked instead.

"Tony's been out of work for fourteen months. We're living on my salary but he's been looking for something. I'm telecommuting when he's away so Lucy's not home alone too much." She started chewing on her lip. "Has he got into trouble?"

"He's a person of interest in a bank robbery investigation, Mrs. Espera," said Ray quietly, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his thighs. "So if you--"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," said Teresa suddenly.

Brad's eyebrows shot upward.

She launched herself off of the armchair and started pacing the room. "That fucking asshole, I _knew_ \--"

"Teresa," said Brad in a voice loud enough to cover her muttering, "do you know something about this?"

She spent another thirty seconds pacing around angrily and looking like she'd hit the first thing that crossed her; Brad and Ray sat back uneasily. Finally she spat, "Those fucking losers he drinks with."

"Who?"

"I don't know, down at the Marine bar near here. Three guys Tony's been hanging out with for a few months. I met them all when he invited them over for a poker night and I didn't like any of them. I think they were all contractors for a while; one of them said something about getting him contract work with good pay."

Brad knew this was it. "I need names. Descriptions. The name of the bar. Something."

Teresa stopped in front of the window, hands clenched and knuckles turning white. "The bar's called the Lamb and Toad. One of them, his last name is Jacks. He's an enormous guy, they call him 'Manimal'." She made a face.

Brad and Ray shared a look and stood up almost at the same time.

"Brad," said Teresa. He froze.

All the anger seemed to have rushed out of her at once. "Brad, he's. Is Tony okay? Is he in a lot of trouble?"

Brad had to fight to keep his voice from shaking when he said, "It's an open investigation. I'm sorry."

Her lips tightened and she shook her head harshly, wrapping her arms around her middle. Brad and Ray let themselves out.

"How'd it go in there?" Fick asked when they got back in the car. He'd been emailing or something on his phone.

"We've got a lead," said Ray, when Brad remained silent.

***

Federal money only went so far and instead of taking the plane to Boston when they'd finished up in Arlington, they drove in the g-ride Fick had requisitioned. Poke's body had apparently gone ahead of them.

Brad had decided a long time ago that you could tell a lot about a man by the music he liked, and as their sedan crept north along with the rest of the population of the northeast, Brad was saddened to learn that despite his cultured exterior, if the contents of his iPod were any yardstick then Fick liked a lot of the same bullshit music Ray did.

"I wish we were going faster so that I could stand a chance of dying if I bailed out of this car right now," he opined after an hour, when Fick and Ray had settled into tormenting him with a car karaoke compilation of Ludacris.

"Don't listen to Brad," Ray piped up from the backseat where Brad had banished him like a dog. "He likes Air Supply."

Fick grinned and it made him look about sixteen. "Air Supply? Really, Colbert?"

"Hey," said Ray before Brad could defend himself, "you got any Johnny Cash?"

"Fuck's sake," said Brad, staring dully at the road signs going past. Luckily, Fick's musical pedantry apparently had limits, and there was no Johnny Cash or any other kind of country music in his arsenal. Brad cautiously allowed himself to like the guy again.

***

The Fringe Division claimed part of the Boston field office, and it looked like every other FBI office Brad had ever walked into: harsh fluorescent lights glaring down on cheap desks crowded with computers and phones, the walls crowded with filing cabinets and the doors to offices, conference rooms and interview rooms.

Fick reported directly to Agent Ferrando, the head of Fringe Division, who was chatting with another baby agent when they stepped off the elevator. He sized up Brad and Ray briefly before nodding at Fick. "My office," he rasped, sounding like a guy trying to impersonate Brando. Even though his voice was whispery, it still somehow managed to carry across the bullpen.

"Is this the two guys you picked up in LA?" Ferrando asked as he opened his door.

"Agents Colbert and Person," Fick confirmed as they walked in and took seats. Ferrando's desk was imposing hardwood and he settled behind it like a king in his throne.

"What have you gentlemen got for me?" he asked.

"Sir, after Agent Colbert managed to ID the body from the scene, we tracked down the man's wife; she led us to what we believe was the local hangout of the crew he was working with." Fick straightened a little, squared his shoulders as he delivered his report. "Mr. Espera's associates were three other ex-Marines who all had experience in defense contracting; they were regulars at the bar where they'd meet, but the bar staff couldn't recall them being around during the week of any of the three bank hits. Going off the timeline, Espera doesn't seem to have joined their crew until the job in Chicago. We weren't able to obtain any information on who exactly they were, who might have been coordinating them or what their goals were beyond a paycheck."

Ferrando frowned. "That's not much."

"We've still got the body to examine properly, sir," Fick offered. "All that was done in LA was removing it from the concrete, for transport."

"Has Pappy got it yet?" Ferrando stood up and so did Fick; Brad and Ray awkwardly followed their lead.

"He should by now," said Fick.

"Go see how he's doing," said Ferrando, "and take Walt with you. We need someone on babysitting duty and he's not currently engaged with anything else."

Walt turned out to be the baby agent Ferrando had been speaking with when they'd arrived; he was a junior agent who was currently running the traditional gauntlet of taking all the shit jobs. He was also possibly the most upbeat person Brad had ever met in the Bureau.

"Hey, guys," he said brightly, shaking their hands when Fick introduced them. His expression was open and he reminded Brad of a puppy. "It's good to see some new faces around here."

"You're still a new face around here," Fick reminded him with a grin as he detoured past his desk and grabbed another set of keys from a drawer. The message light on his phone was blinking but he ignored it.

"We're leaving the office?" Brad asked, intrigued by where they might have their ME stationed but also not entirely sure whether he and Ray were supposed to tag along or stay at the office and behave themselves.

But Fick said, "Yep," and led them down to the parking garage, where the taillights flashed on a silver SUV. "Pappy's office is at Harvard."

"That's unique."

"He's a civilian contractor," Fick said, heading out into the traffic. Boston was cold; Brad wished he'd brought a real coat.

Instead of a white-boy rap serenade, the trip to Harvard was quiet punctuated by Ray talking in the backseat, corrupting Walt with horrible, untrue stories of things that had mostly happened to Brad and not Ray in the first place. They also involved way more drawing of weapons than had, strictly speaking, actually happened. Fick concentrated on navigating Boston without dying while Brad stared absently out the window at the profusion of trees, bricks and limestone that surrounded them.

Dr. 'Pappy' Patrick's office was in the basement of a science building, a big, open lab with dusty, arched windows that filled the room with grey light, bolstered by racks of fluorescent bulbs dangling from the ceiling. Three cadavers were scattered around the room on tables; Brad counted four laptops and three extra monitors from where he stood in the doorway, and one corner was a tangle of rubber tubing sprouting from glassware that looked suspiciously like a still (but what did Brad know about chemistry).

Pappy was peering into the chest cavity of one of the cadavers and frowning when Fick called a greeting to him. It took him another minute to acknowledge them; he was probably in his thirties and had a southern accent. The hand he held out for Brad to shake still had a red-stained nitrile glove on it, and when Brad just stared down at it, Pappy blinked before saying, "Whoops," in his laconic accent and peeling it off. Brad still wasn't sure he wanted to shake the guy's hand after that, but he did anyway.

"I'm looking at your guy," Pappy said when the niceties were done and he'd given Walt an absent nod and a wave toward some glassware that needed to be cleaned. "I can't make heads or tails of him."

"What's that mean?" Brad asked.

"Well, besides the fact that his cause of death was suffocation by the concrete, so far I've only managed to discover one thing about him that might explain how he ended up trapped in that wall like he got stuck moving through Jello. He's pretty radioactive."

"What?" said Fick.

"Oh god, I cut him out of the wall. Is all my sperm going to end up with two heads and no tails?" Ray demanded.

Pappy gave Poke's body a thoughtful look before saying, "I'm sure it's fine." Brad wasn't convinced and Ray didn't seem to be, either, but Fick had moved on.

"What does it mean that he's radioactive?"

Pappy shrugged, hands stuffed in his lab coat pockets. "Couldn't tell you. It's not a question I can answer for you with the resources I have at hand."

"What other resources do you need?" Fick asked, a terse note in his voice. He clearly wanted to solve the mystery of the man in the wall.

Pappy gave him a long look. "It's not so much a 'what' as a 'who'," he said finally. "My old colleague, Rudy. He knows more than anyone really should about radiation. Genius in the field, really."

"Where's he work now?" Fick asked, his phone in hand.

"Well, that I don't know," said Pappy. "He quit researching a few years ago, fucked off to an ashram to find himself or something." He shrugged again. "Start by checking all the mountaintops," he suggested.

***

Walt was still washing glassware when they left the lab; Ray elected to stay behind with him because he had a big, obvious crush on Walt, and Brad gave thirty seconds of thought to the kid's chances at retaining his sanity before shrugging and leaving Ray with a clap on the shoulder. Fick made twenty thousand phone calls on his bluetooth as they drove back to the office. It sounded to Brad like finding this Rudy person was requiring string-pulling on the level of a puppetmaster.

The office was only half-full when they got back; Brad's calculator watch said it was six-thirty. "Jesus," he said, too overwhelmed even for jet lag. "This was a long day."

"They're all long days around here. You get used to it," said Fick as he started digging through his desk to fill his messenger bag.

Brad watched him go through the motions of getting ready to leave work and then followed that thought to its conclusion. "I need to find a hotel," he realized out loud. "Do you think they'll let me expense it?"

"Even odds," said Fick. "For sure there'll be a long debate." He looked at the covers of some files before stuffing them in the bag alongside his laptop and then he said, "Whatever. You know what? I have a couch. It has good reviews on TripAdvisor."

"Does it?"

Fick smirked. "It actually might, knowing some of the people who've slept on it." He closed his bag. "I'll feel guilty if you have to go bare-knuckles with the bean counters after I sort of was responsible for your being here. Come back to my place and we can get pizza and hunt through the files for new leads on this mess. You can stay as long as you're in town." He frowned suddenly. "Is Agent Person...?"

"He'll be fine," said Brad. "He enjoys being passive-aggressive with expense reports, anyway."

Fick shouldered his bag and Brad grabbed the duffel he'd thrown together for the trip.

"Of course, if you'd rather take your chances on the hotel room to avoid putting in overtime, no one would blame you," Fick ventured.

"I didn't join the Bureau for the money and leisure time," said Brad. "But you're buying the pizza."

Fick laughed. "You're a piece of work, Agent Colbert."

They got in the elevator. "Since I'm sleeping on your couch, I'd prefer if you called me Brad." People calling him 'Agent' usually just reminded him of Encino Man.

Fick smiled. "Call me Nate, then."

***

The pizza was mostly gone; Brad and Nate were on either end of the sofa, Nate in the t-shirt and ragged jeans he'd changed into when they got back to his apartment while Brad had ditched his tie and rolled his shirt sleeves up to the elbows. They'd been mostly silent while they ate, but now that the food was almost done distracting him, Brad was starting to eye the files scattered across the coffee table.

"So where are we at?" he asked finally, after considering his last pizza crust and deciding not to eat it.

Nate washed his food down with a swallow of beer before answering. "We've got the files here for all three robberies, plus the file my team knocked together on Espera."

Brad leaned forward to snag the topmost folder and flip through its contents; it was the report from the second robbery, a Chase bank in Chicago. His gaze caught on the theft report from the bank: only a single safe deposit box had been taken. Brad blinked. "Do we have the theft report from LA?"

"I got it before we left." Nate dragged the coffee table closer to them before digging out the LA case file and opening it. "A safe deposit box," he said. "Blown out. Cops found traces of explosive residue around the edges of the blown box front."

Brad was reading almost the same thing in the Chicago file. "They were all boxes, weren't they?" he said. "No cash. No opportunistic extra grabs. Just the single boxes they obviously went in there for."

Nate sighed. "You got it."

"Through a wall," Brad added, reaching for his own beer.

Nate stole back the LA file and laid out the theft reports from all three banks on the coffee table, side by side. "Look," he said, "there's no clear link between the three boxes. They're all at different banks--a Chase, a Bank of America and a credit union--and they're all registered to different people."

Brad leaned in to peer at the reports, which left him almost shoulder to shoulder with Nate. "Can we dig up more information on these people? When they opened the boxes, who they are, contact info so we can find out what they contained?"

"The banks will probably cough up the information on the when for us, but the who might be trickier. New York and Chicago have already tried and failed to contact the owners of their boxes and the names don't have any hits in the federal databases."

"Could be fake names," Brad mused.

"Could be normal people who've kept off the radar," Nate countered.

"But if they were normal people, what could they have been keeping in safe deposit boxes that was worth this much work to steal?"

"Shit," said Nate.

Brad frowned at the reports again and then something niggled at the back of his mind. Something about the box numbers bothered him. He stared at the papers for a minute while Nate muttered something about dummy accounts, and then he said, "Wait, hang on," and switched the positions of the New York and Chicago reports on the table.

"What?" said Nate. "What is it?"

Now that the sheets were in order it was obvious. He pointed at the box numbers. "Look," he said. "The numbers in order are 233, 377 and 610."

"What's interesting about that?" Nate asked.

"Jesus," said Brad, "it's the Fibonacci Sequence."

Nate squinted at the papers on the coffee table. "I have a degree in classics. Remind me, is that the one where you add the numbers to get more numbers?"

"Yes," said Brad, feeling pain in his heart for letting such an ignorant definition stand. "It's a recurrence relation. Every number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding it."

Nate turned to look at him then, which was when Brad registered how close they were sitting. "You're a geek," he said, sounding revelatory.

Brad sat back against the arm of the couch defensively. "Came in handy, didn't it?"

"It's three boxes. It might be a nutty coincidence."

Brad tried a gambit. "Do you get a lot of nutty coincidences in your line of work?"

Nate's silence was telling.

"I think one person owned all three of these boxes," said Brad. "I also think that they own more, and that our merry team of bank robbers knows about them. I say we flag any safe deposit box robberies with box numbers that are in the Fibonacci Sequence. Past and future."

Nate stared between Brad and the chaos of papers on the coffee table. "What the hell," he said finally. "I've done crazier things on cases than this."

"Like what?" Brad demanded.

Nate took a swig of his beer. "So classified you might not even have the clearance to know how classified they are."

"Is it being in the northeast or the DHS that makes you a prima donna?" Brad asked casually.

"It's my Ivy League education," said Nate. Over Brad's snort, he said, "Let's look at the rest of these files and see if we can turn up any sane leads to pursue."

***

Brad woke up on Nate's couch with the pillow folded in half under his head, his feet hanging off the cushions at the other arm of the couch, and Nate fresh off a morning run, standing in the tiny kitchen in beat-up sneakers and shorts as he poked at the coffeemaker.

"Morning," he said to Brad on the way past. "Give me ten minutes and you can have the shower."

Brad rubbed his eyes and stretched his spine out as the muffled sound of the shower running reached him. He had a brief image of Nate stripping down and then sighed and sat up to dig through his bag.

They passed each other in the hall, Nate with a towel wrapped around his waist and smiling at Brad absently with all the laissez-faire of the locker room. Brad made his shower quick and emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, to a cup of coffee waiting on the counter for him.

"We're leaving in ten," said Nate over the rim of his cup, looking somehow younger in his suit than he had in his faded Dartmouth t-shirt less than half an hour ago. "Want some toast or something? Help yourself."

"Maybe when I finish my breakfast," said Brad before taking a sip of coffee. It was probably the best cup of coffee he was going to drink today.

Nate went to gather up the clusterfuck of files they'd spread all over his living room, shoving them back into his bag, and then they were off.

Walt and Ray were bickering when they arrived at the office; when Brad got close enough to hear, he realized the argument was about the relative merits of the Alien and Predator movie franchises.

"It's probably not too late to ship Ray back across the country," he told Nate. "I mean it."

Nate's lips quirked. "He seems like he's all bark."

"But it's a really fucking annoying bark," said Brad.

They were at Nate's desk; as Nate dropped his bag, Brad cased the area and realized the desk facing Nate's--shoved right up against it--was vacant, with only a phone and an empty pencil cup on it. "Can I set up camp here?" he asked, pointing at the chair.

Nate stared at the desk for a beat longer than seemed normal before he stuttered out, "I--yeah. Yeah, go for it. No one's, uh, there."

Brad settled in and hauled out his laptop and tried not to stare overtly at Nate. That was the most awkward moment they'd had.

"What's up, homes?" said Ray suddenly, rolling up to him seated backwards on another chair.

"While some people were apparently committing all their energies to terrible sci-fi, we were generating new leads," said Brad as he booted up his laptop.

"What can I say, I'm a pussy who only likes working 60 hours a week for my 40-hour paycheck," said Ray.

"You'll never advance in the Bureau that way," Brad admonished as he logged into the FBI server.

"Not while all the bigwigs still masturbate to portraits of Hoover," Ray agreed, resting his chin on his crossed arms. "What are these leads?"

Nate answered for them. "We're working a theory that the stolen safe deposit boxes all belong to one paranoid, extremely nerdy individual."

"That's not really how I put it," said Brad.

Ray whistled, long and low. " _Brad_. Are you telling me that they all belonged to _you_?"

Nate started laughing at that so Brad gave them both the finger.

"I've put in the flag on the box numbers," said Nate.

Ray opened his mouth again but before he could ask, Brad interrupted him. "Ray, do us a favour and act like the underpaid civil servant you are, and go call the banks to find out when the stolen boxes were opened. I'm going to go digging through the database for this Jacks guy that Poke was associated with."

"That's going to take you a while," Ray pointed out.

Brad spread his hands. "Have we found Rudy Reyes yet to tell us what's up with the body?"

Ray held his hands up defensively before walking off to hopefully call banks and not corrupt junior agents for a while.

***

Just before lunch, Nate's phone rang and then within five minutes he and Walt were both gone. Brad barely noticed, still wading through the database looking for his guy.

Ray's skinny ass planting itself on the edge of the desk dragged him out of his trance, though.

"I like it here," said Ray.

Brad sat back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes. "Sexually harassing Junior Agent Hasser?"

"Mostly the lack of Encino Man to mess with the feng shui. This office has a good vibe."

"Did you make those phone calls or what?" Brad asked tiredly.

"I did, homes. All three boxes were opened in 2006. I also got the name and contact info for the box owner in LA." He stuck a Post-It to Brad's forehead. When Brad peeled it off, Ray went on, "The address is supposed to be in Silverlake. Also, it's fake."

"You checked?"

"I didn't have to. My ex-girlfriend lived on the same street. The house numbers don't go that high; it's like a cul de sac or whatever."

"Fabricated," mused Brad. "Like your assertions of ever having a girlfriend. I bet the street isn't real, either. It's a magical place where imaginary friends live."

"Maybe we can find your personality there," offered Ray. "Anyway. Dead end."

"Except the 2006 part," said Brad. "That gives us a timeline to start from."

"Back to the important thing, then," said Ray. "I totally want to transfer to this office."

"I doubt they want you."

"Please," said Ray, "my skills are in high demand. Anyway, they'll take you, just make me part of the package like you did when we came to Boston in the first place. I'm not too proud to be part of your rider if it gets me out of fucking SoCal."

Brad sighed and gave up on doing more work until he got rid of Ray again. "What makes you think they'll take me, either? We've been here one day."

Ray just rapped his knuckles on the desk next to his leg. "This desk is what. You know who used to sit here? Because I do. It was Fick's old partner. His name was Mike Wynn. You know what happened to Wynn? He _died_. In the field. Fick was there. And no one's used this desk since."

It took Brad a minute to find a response to that. "I like California," he managed finally. "At least more than I like the brick-and-mortar bullshit here. Where did you even hear all this shit, anyway? Walt?"

"I have sources you'd never dream of," Ray countered.

"Walt's been here like ten minutes from the sounds of things," said Brad. "He doesn't know anything."

"Fick's replaced his dead partner," said Ray, standing up with the look of the verklempt. "In this desk... and in his heart."

Brad threw a pen, which Ray ducked, and then he ran off before Brad could go for the desk phone to try again.

A peaceful hour and a half later, Brad had just about defeated the FBI computer system when Nate and Walt came back in. Walt looked... damp. When they got closer, Brad realized it was more that he had a definite sheen; the shoulders and most of the front of his jacket were covered in something slimy-looking. Nate was dry but his hair was a mess, the whole left side of his suit was dirty and he was favouring his left arm.

"What the fuck happened?" Brad asked.

"Don't ask," said Nate, sitting carefully in his chair. His lapel had silvery spots on it that seemed like backspatter, but maybe from an exploded paint marker.

"Nate got kinda sorta hit by a car," said Walt. "But at least he's dry. This shit smells."

"Go shower in the gym before you do your report." Nate waved him off with his good hand. "That stuff could be an irritant. And this is why I told you not to pay a lot for your suits."

"You got hit by a car?" Brad asked. "You were only gone a couple of hours!"

"It wasn't a big deal. I got checked out by the EMTs on scene. I'll be a little sore tomorrow but it sounds worse than it was."

Brad watched him carefully lift his arm to rest on his desk.

"Get anything while we were gone?" Nate asked, trying for bright but missing by a wide margin.

Brad felt a strange reluctance to let him change the subject, but went along with it anyway, waving at his laptop screen. "I'm down to three enlisted Marines who could be this Jacks guy."

"You sure he wasn't an officer?" Nate asked.

"His nickname was 'Manimal'. He was a grunt. Anyway, it's either Lance Corporal Anthony Jacks, Staff Sergeant Henry Jacks, or PFC Christopher Jacks. Oh, and Ray found out that all the safe deposit boxes were opened five years ago."

Nate frowned. "That's not enough to go on."

"Circumstantial evidence has to be better than no evidence," said Brad, watching Nate dig a bottle of Tylenol out of his desk drawer and swallow two pills dry.

They weren't out of the game yet, though, because when they dragged back to Nate's apartment that evening, Nate had barely declared his suit jacket toast when his phone rang: there was a hit on the Fibonacci numbers search, a bank robbery three weeks prior in Cincinnati, and Rudy Reyes had been found.

***

"New Mexico?" Brad asked over his beer.

Nate let his phone tumble out of his fingers into the couch cushions. "Taos, New Mexico."

"Where's that, specifically?"

"How should I know?" Nate rubbed at his forehead. "I should go back to work."

Brad let his eyebrow communicate his skepticism. "Why?" he asked. "Does your division have a teleporter?"

Nate's look was sharp instead of exasperated like Brad had been trying for. "No. We don't."

Brad chose not to think about the implication hanging there that teleporters might be _real_ and simply said, "So then he's not going to be here yet. He has to catch a plane from Buttfuck, New Mexico to Boston, and even if he's any good to you before morning, I bet Pappy won't be."

Nate let out a long breath. "I guess."

"Also," said Brad, "you got hit by a car today."

"It barely touched me."

Brad looked at the bandages on Nate's left arm, not covered by his t-shirt.

"It's just road rash," Nate said, covering his bandage protectively. "What are you, my mom?"

Brad laughed. "I just hate to see an agent get eaten alive so fast."

Nate went pale.

As Brad was wondering what he'd said, Nate pushed off the couch to go into the kitchen. "I think there's leftover fettuccine carbonara," he said over his shoulder.

Brad watched him go for a second and then decided to change the subject. "Ray decided he never wants to go back to LA," he said, trailing Nate into the kitchen.

"Well, we need more people," said Nate, his head in the fridge.

"He might steal Walt away from you."

"Walt's not my partner." Nate dropped a tupperware on the counter and peeled the lid off. "In fact, I think he's being put on permanent babysitting duty for Pappy and now, I guess, this Rudy guy." He waved vaguely.

"Do you have a partner?" Brad asked, watching Nate haul plates out of the cupboard and toss the pasta in the microwave.

"Not at the moment." Nate looked up at him and for a minute his eyes looked so striking that Brad almost forgot where he was or what he was doing. "Why? Are you job hunting?"

He was almost shaken enough to miss the teasing tone. "I can't fucking stand this part of the country. Full of Ivy League liberal dicksucks."

"Right," said Nate, "and LA is full of level-headed conservatives."

"I'm from San Diego," said Brad, and then, "Fuck you."

Nate laughed. At least he didn't look white as a sheet anymore. "On the other hand," he pointed out, playing idly with a fork, "apparently your SAC in LA is the missing link."

"Don't remind me," said Brad.

***

Rudy was picked up at the airport late the next afternoon by a junior agent; around four o'clock Brad, Nate, Ray and Walt all found themselves hanging around Nate's desk, which had the best view of the elevator.

At ten past, Christeson came off the elevator with a tall guy in sunglasses. Christeson looked kind of dumbstruck, and when they came into the office and Brad could see properly, he understood why.

Rudy stood around six feet and was wearing flip-flops, baggy khaki pants and a shirt made out of a blanket, cut in a deep V that showed off ridiculous pecs. He dropped his canvas bag on the industrial carpet and whipped off his designer sunglasses to give the field office an appraising look. Brad's only thought was that no fucking scientist should ever be allowed to be so pretty.

Most of the office seemed to have ground to a halt by the time Rudy's eyes landed on Brad. He smiled with perfect white teeth and strode forward, leaving Christeson in his dust and extending a hand for shaking. Brad took it hesitantly and the next thing he knew he was pressed up against Rudy, being thumped hard on the back.

"Namaste, brother," said Rudy into his ear, before letting him go to hug Nate. Brad backpedaled a couple of feet; he could see the white all around Nate's eyes as Rudy gave him a manly, thumping hug of his own.

"The energy in here is terrible," Rudy declared as he went after Ray. "Is this where we'll be working?"

"No," said Nate belatedly, straightening his suit. "Pappy's at Harvard."

Rudy smiled. "I haven't set foot in that place since I did my post-doc. Well, let's not keep the old man waiting."

"I'll, uh. I'll get my keys," said Nate.

Ray caught Brad by the arm as Rudy led the procession out of the office. "Homes," he hissed, "Rudy's hot. I think I'm questioning my sexuality."

"If you need to talk to somebody about it," Brad muttered back, "it's not going to be me."

Rudy rode shotgun and Brad levered himself into the backseat behind Nate; they made Ray sit in the middle. Brad regretted that decision around the fifth time Ray's bony elbow caught him in the ribs, as Nate was still on his way out of the parking garage.

"So what were you doing in New Mexico?" Walt asked over Ray's bitching.

"Finding my peaceful spirit," said Rudy.

"What's that mean?" asked Walt.

"Dharma, my brother. We all must find our own true way in the universe. For some the way is clear, but for the rest of us, we must seek it each in our own time."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," muttered Brad under his breath.

But apparently he wasn't quiet enough, because Rudy turned a little in his seat and pointed at him, looking overtop of his ridiculous sunglasses. "You have a warrior spirit."

"How can you know that?" Brad demanded. "You don't even know my name."

"You don't conceal it; your soul is a hunter's soul. You've seen the battlefield. It's clear to those who know how to look," said Rudy. "Agent Colbert."

Ray burst out laughing. "He's got your number, Brad."

Rudy faced forward again, pushing his sunglasses up his nose. "My new way might be the Dao, but once a researcher, always a researcher."

Brad stared at the side of his head, awed in spite of himself. The zen motherfucker had spent the drive from the airport pumping Christeson for information. Probably while talking about Buddha and drum circles the entire time.

***

Pappy was doing something with a centrifuge when they got to the lab; Rudy bounded down the stairs and whirled him around to kiss him on each cheek.

"Looking well, old man," he said, holding Pappy by the shoulders.

"You look even more like a hippie," said Pappy. "How's Buddha doing?"

"Probably about the same as ever," said Rudy. He caught sight of something on the side of Pappy's face and moved his head by the chin to get a better look. "When are you going to learn how to shave?"

"When I master feeding myself and tying my shoes so they won't come undone. It's about time you got here."

"I only came at all because you asked," said Rudy. "I nearly buried my phone in a snowbank to make Homeland Security stop calling me! You're lucky I answered when it was you."

"You're here now," said Pappy. "Come look at this guy." The moment, apparently, was over.

Everyone else had hung back near the door awkwardly during the reunion but when Rudy put his sunglasses away to examine Poke's body, which Pappy had been keeping in a tub of ice, they cautiously started trickling in. Pappy directed Walt to go get whatever readings he'd already done, which Ray went to 'help' with, and Brad and Nate hung back a little from the ice tub while Rudy and Pappy got into a heated debate about alpha radiation.

"That's outrageously high, Paps; it has to be an equipment error," Rudy declared, looking less the New Age yogi and more the multiple-doctorate scientist he was supposed to be as he took stapled printouts from Walt and flipped through them quickly. He stopped halfway through the pile, flipped back several pages, and frowned, reading more slowly.

A couple of minutes later, he sighed and looked at Pappy, who was standing with his arms crossed, tapping a foot impatiently.

"Is it what I think it is?" Pappy asked.

Nate startled beside Brad; Pappy had let them believe he had no earthly idea what was going on.

"Fuck," said Rudy.

This, Brad realized, was not good at all.

"Tell me again how he got like this, please," said Rudy, turning his attention to Brad and Nate.

"He was found at the scene of a bank robbery," said Nate. "Stuck inside a concrete wall."

"He looked like he'd been caught in place moving through it," said Brad.

"It is what I think it is, isn't it?" said Pappy.

Apparently ignoring Pappy, Rudy, his hand on his chin, said, "When Pappy and I started working together, in R&D at Massive Dynamic, we had a lot of defense contracts. Mostly weapons. I personally worked on a project to develop a cloak or a jammer for ground vehicles. One of the angles we tried was using high-intensity vibration, but it didn't make it past the initial testing stage. The device used a lot of power and most of the things you mounted it on just shook to pieces.

"I thought mass was a factor, so I managed to get my hands on an actual humvee--just a junker the military couldn't patch up and send out one more time. It was big enough to hold together when the machine turned on, but." Rudy stopped.

"But?" Brad prompted.

"The truck's vibrations achieved resonance and all four wheels just sank into the asphalt it was parked on. We had to shut the machine off to get near it, but by then it was stuck. All the tires popped at the same time. I had to get some guys to cut the truck out of the ground so that we could dispose of it. Then some general asked me if we could make the machine into a tectonic weapon, but thankfully I was pretty sure we couldn't." Rudy rubbed his hand over his face, looking pale under his tan.

"So that has something to do with this?" Ray asked, having sneaked up on Brad's other side.

Rudy dragged a hand though his hair as he looked around the lab, then he grabbed a clean beaker, a Sharpie, and a box of Minute Rice that Pappy kept on a rolling cart he referred to as his pantry.

"Hey," said Pappy, as Rudy started pouring rice into the beaker. "Don't waste food."

"It's in the name of science, brother," said Rudy absently. When the beaker was full, he set it on the lab bench next to the empty centrifuge, stood the Sharpie on its end in the rice, and gestured at it. "Looks fairly solid, does it not?"

He switched on the centrifuge. The lab bench began to shake under it, vibrating the beaker, and the marker slowly sank into the rice, like it was disappearing into quicksand.

When Rudy shut off the centrifuge again, they stared in contemplative silence at the top of the marker cap, which was all that remained poking out of the beaker of rice.

"At the right frequency, the vibration of my cloaking machine disrupted the... the _stuff_ of the truck, the molecular bonds, and weakened them enough to cause the truck to pass through other solid matter," said Rudy quietly. "Somebody has either gotten their hands on the design of this machine or developed their own, and they're using it to pass solid objects, namely people, through surfaces affected by the resonant vibration."

"And Espera didn't make it all the way through."

Rudy shook his head. "Clearly there's a limit on how long the weakened state can last." He frowned. "Interesting."

"Who could have this technology?" Nate asked.

Rudy shrugged, turning away to stare at Poke's body again.

"The rest of his team, though," Pappy piped up. "They'll all have the same radiation issue this guy's got."

"What?" Nate asked. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," said Pappy. "They've got to. No way only one of them has it."

"Is it enough to make them sick?"

"Might be enough to give them cancer," Pappy mused. "Between that and how much that machine's gotta cost them, whatever they're stealing from banks must be pretty good."

"What did they take, anyway?" Rudy asked, turning Poke's head to and fro and examining his skin.

"The contents of some safe deposit boxes," said Nate distractedly, already dialling Ferrando on his phone.

"Hmm," said Pappy. "Must be something real good."

***

They left Ray and Walt behind at the lab and went back to the field office in evening traffic. Ferrando was leaning on the edge of Nate's desk when they got there.

"Gentlemen," he greeted them, getting to his feet. "Agent Fick, your search is in the system for ER admissions with symptoms of radiation poisoning; we're investigating from here to South Carolina."

"Thank you, sir," said Nate.

"Can we say yet that we are making progress on this case?" Ferrando asked, folding his hands behind his back.

"Um," said Nate.

Ferrando's lips twisted. "I had hoped that might be a yes or no question, Agent Fick."

"Complications are developing," said Nate. "Every step of progress reveals more we've yet to uncover. I'm assured that this radiation poisoning lead will bear fruit, though, sir."

"Your assurances warm my heart, Agent Fick." Ferrando nodded his head toward one wall of conference rooms. "Agent Lovell was looking for you a few minutes ago."

Nate nodded at Ferrando and then at Brad before heading off. It took a moment for the awkwardness of being alone with the Special Agent in Charge of Fringe Division to sink in.

"Walk with me, Agent Colbert," said Ferrando, leading the way to his office.

"I've been looking into your file and Agent Person's," he continued when they were settled on either side of the huge desk.

That was never a promising lead-in to a conversation. Brad waited for what would follow.

"You've both got military background, Afghanistan and Iraq. Bet you've seen some shit."

"I have seen a great deal of shit, sir," Brad agreed. "So has Agent Person, from my understanding. We didn't serve together."

Ferrando nodded. "Brought together through the warm embrace of the Bureau."

Brad thought he detected a hint of irony in Ferrando's expression and he let a grin slip. "Exactly, sir."

Ferrando seemed to settle deeper into his chair. "You've been posted out in LA for a few years. You like it there?"

"It's been a rewarding experience, sir. And I felt lucky to be posted so close to my family."

Ferrando's look was shrewd. "Craig Schwetje's been your SAC for a while, hasn't he?"

Brad nodded.

"I never liked that guy," said Ferrando.

"Sir?"

"He's a climber and an idiot. Sadly, he'll go far in the Bureau, but hopefully it'll be on the west coast and he'll leave the rest of us out of it."

Brad stared blankly until Ferrando started laughing. He relaxed so suddenly that a chuckle escaped from him, too.

"My position under Agent Schwetje's administration is challenging," was what he settled on, still not entirely sure what game Ferrando was playing. The politics were the worst fucking part of the FBI.

"Look, Agent Person's already asked me about transferring into our field office," said Ferrando. "This morning. He's spent half his time since you guys got here with the IT guys, fixing our shitty surveillance gear, and if we can keep him around for that alone, I'll gladly take him."

"Person's a savant with bugs, wires and radios." Brad could admit this as long as Ray wasn't anywhere close enough to hear.

Ferrando pinned Brad in place with a look. "How about you, Agent Colbert? Where do you see yourself in the Bureau in five years? Next year?"

"I haven't given it a great deal of thought, sir," said Brad.

"There's a shortage of good field agents in the FBI. This situation is reflected in Fringe Division; in fact it is magnified. Our mandate is so secretive that recruitment is a challenge. And frankly, the cases we take on can be unsettling. It's not for everyone. We have a higher-than-average mortality rate among our agents."

Brad was unsure if he should even speak, so he sat passively.

Ferrando's look sharpened. "But you know all this already. There's not much I can tell you that you don't already know without bumping your clearance up several levels."

Brad's own breathing seemed abruptly loud; his blood roared in his ears. Ferrando knew about his little research expedition into the computer system, right before coming to Boston. He was caught. This was good for jail time, probably.

"Agent, you look like you've seen a ghost." Ferrando's voice cut through his cold panic. "I wouldn't have kept this information to myself for the past several days if I had intent to punish you for it. I like your initiative and frankly, I like your cojones. We need more of that around here. Someone with your skills, someone who isn't easy to rattle. Are you easy to rattle, Agent?"

"No sir," said Brad with a voice that sounded surer than he felt.

Ferrando looked satisfied. "I won't push you to make any decisions. I don't like to coerce, even despite our lack of manpower; it doesn't work for our team dynamic. But there's a position available." He leaned back in his chair with a soft creak. "That's all, Agent."

Brad stood slowly. "Thank you, sir."

Nate got out of his desk chair when Brad walked back into the bullpen. "What's up?" he asked, shouldering his bag.

Brad shook his head. "Nothing," he said.

Nate, thankfully, let it drop. "I'm thinking Chinese," he said.

"I could go for some fried rice," Brad conceded.

***

Brad woke up with a start; it was dark and cool and someone was shaking his arm, repeating his name. He thought fuzzily that there must be an attack or an order to roll out and wondered what he'd done with his rifle, but when he put his hand down at his side he felt cushions instead of dirt. His head cleared of sleep. It was 2011 and he was sleeping on a couch in Boston and that was Nate waking him.

"What," he managed, levering himself up a little, hauling himself into a sitting position. Nate backed off; he was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt and his hair was going in several directions. The green LED on the DVD player across the room said it was three in the morning.

"I got a call," Nate rasped, not awake any more than Brad was. "We're going to Philly."

"Now?"

"Now. Skip some of the traffic, anyway. We'll pick up coffee on the way." And with that, Nate left him. The bathroom light turned the hallway walls orange and made Brad's eyes water before Nate shut the door and turned the shower on.

Brad rubbed at his face, glared at the clock and went to get a glass of water. The Corps had left him with a fondness for sleeping several hours in a row every night.

When they were both showered, dressed and backing out of Nate's parking spot in the dark, Nate said, "A twenty-something kid showed up at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center three days ago with symptoms matching those of radiation poisoning."

"How very interesting," said Brad.

"Local field office went and picked him up at the motel he was staying at, and now we get to go question him." They drove past the coffee shop down the road from Nate's building, and Nate waved at the dark windows. "Still too early for Starbucks."

"Our job is a glamourous one. What is this young man's name?"

"Evan Stafford, former Marine Lance Corporal."

"Corporal Stafford," said Brad, staring out the passenger window at the streetlights. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

***

Evan Stafford sat alone at the chipped, faux-wood table in an interview room. He was a white guy in a do-rag and a ratty Sean John hoodie and his knee was jiggling incessantly under the table. He looked sickly even under the fluorescent lights and behind the one-way glass window.

"He hasn't said much yet," said Agent Patterson, standing on the other side of Nate as they watched Stafford through the window. "He hasn't asked for a lawyer, either."

"Well," said Nate, blinking hard (Brad had driven the last half of the trip but Nate had only kind of slept during his respite; they were both wired on coffee). "I guess we should get this show on the road."

"Let me talk to him," said Brad without stopping to consider his words. Nate froze in his turn toward the door.

"You really want to do the interview?" Nate asked. Patterson looked on placidly.

"I think I can play off the Corps connection," said Brad.

Nate held his hands up. "I'm not getting in your way, Brad. Just impressed by the initiative."

Patterson snorted; Brad gave Nate the eyebrow as he brushed past to head for the door, and Nate just grinned back.

Brad took a moment in the hallway to compose himself and straighten his suit before opening the door to the interview room.

Stafford looked up and gave him a quick once-over as Brad moved to the only other chair in the room and sat down. Brad kept his face devoid of emotion.

"Do you know why you're here?" Brad asked.

"Yo, some fuckin' suits went bustin' in my crib and dragged my ass here."

"Yeah, us fuckin' suits are bitches, aren't we?"

Stafford blinked.

"Let me break it down for you, Mr. Stafford. You haven't been feeling too well lately. You feel nauseous. You've got chills. A headache that just won't seem to go away. Your skin itches. Am I on the right track?"

Stafford stared at him. Brad could see the faint tremors in his forearms, since his hands were pressed hard together to stop their shaking.

"You've got radiation poisoning," said Brad, leaning back in his chair. "You need treatment. You probably know how this happened to you, and if you share it with the FBI, we'll see to it that you're looked after."

It took him a moment, but Stafford glared and said, "Fuck you."

So it wasn't going to be quite that easy. Brad crossed his arms and tilted his head up to look at the gray ceiling panels. "How long were you in the Marine Corps?"

"Four years. I bet you know that already."

"Small talk, Mr. Stafford. And you left the Marines as a Lance Corporal. What platoon were you in?"

Stafford's posture went proud. "Second Recon Battalion, Bravo Company. When I left, I did some private contracting for a while. Until they got kicked out of Iraq and let me go. Fucking screwby."

A fellow recon marine; Brad kept his expression schooled. "You got shafted, didn't you, Mr. Stafford? Years of dedicated service to the Corps," he said, "dealing with shitty command on one hand and insurgents on the other. Risking your life day after day with bad supply lines, bad mission planning, and what do you get? A firm handshake and some medals and the disgust of your countrymen. No civilian life skills. You're a warrior with no war."

Stafford had straightened up in his chair, still looking like death's next appointment but the tremors had slowed in his excitement. "Fucking right, son. I was in Fallujah. Shit was insane."

"I invaded Baghdad," said Brad, and then they were both silent for a minute.

"Seriously?" Stafford asked.

"Hoo-rah," said Brad with no inflection. "Stafford. You're going to fucking die if you don't get treated for the radiation poisoning, or stop getting irradiated by passing through solid walls." He marked Stafford's flinch and carried on. "You roll on the other guys, we'll get you treated, maybe get you some leniency and you'll get to keep your veteran benefits. You didn't survive the bullshit in Iraq to punch your ticket like this."

"Fuck," said Stafford, and then he crumpled inwards all of a sudden. "Fuck." His voice was breathy.

Brad stood up. "I'm going to come back in a minute."

Patterson was gone when Brad went back into the room on the other side of the one-way glass. Nate was standing by the window, staring at him with what might have been helplessness.

"What?" said Brad.

Nate shook his head. "Nothing," he said. Then he cleared his throat and said it again, more calmly. "It's nothing."

***

They finally walked outside in the early afternoon with Stafford's confession and Nate seemed like he was actually planning to drive, even though Brad wasn't sure he was actually processing what was going on around him anymore.

"Keys," said Brad, making eye contact.

"No, I'm good. I'll drive."

"You're sleep-deprived."

"So are you!"

"I've done more complicated and dangerous things on less sleep for longer periods of time," said Brad.

Instead of coming back with another rebuttal, Nate froze.

Brad abruptly remembered that earlier Nate had, essentially, listened to him vent about life in the Corps, and wondered simultaneously what was going through Nate's mind to make him act this way and how to defuse the awkwardness.

Nate solved his dilemma by suddenly handing over the keys without a word. Brad decided to take the win and worry about the rest later, if he had to.

"Thank you. Want to get some lunch before we head out?" Maybe it was still breakfast for them, technically.

"Drive-through," Nate suggested, digging one hand through his hair and shoving the other in his trouser pocket as he stalked toward the passenger side. "Wanna go home."

This led to ten minutes of debate and driving around, until Brad finally pulled into a Wendy's drive-through. "If I can't have In-N-Out Burger, then why care," he said as they idled behind a lady in a Prius who was taking forever to order.

"This kind of complacency is what lets the terrorists win," said Nate, his head lolling against the seat. "Get me a Frosty."

They didn't speak for almost an hour after getting out of Wendy's and back on the road. Brad decided to attribute it to eating instead of tension, although that only accounted for part of the time. Nate still didn't sleep; instead he just looked quietly out the window at the traffic around them.

"I hate this drive," Nate said finally.

"Why's that?"

Nate kept looking out the windshield. "Drove it too many times back to Baltimore when I was in college."

"That's where your folks live?" Brad asked, changing lanes to get past a minivan whose driver didn't understand that speed limits were at best just guidelines.

"And my sister, still. I grew up there."

"I'm guessing it wasn't in the hood," said Brad. "Just a hunch."

Nate chuckled a little. "Nope. Suburbs. Private school. The whole nine. I know, it's a shock."

"Rocks my worldview," agreed Brad, grinning at the road. "Do you like going home?"

"I hate it," said Nate. After a minute, he said, "How about you?"

"Adopted and raised by doting left-wing Jewish professionals."

Nate turned to stare at him then. "What happened to you?" He asked, wide-eyed.

"I guess the gamble didn't pay off," Brad shrugged. He almost added that he'd gone to military school, but the moment seemed too good to introduce the M-word and make Nate clam up again.

"I don't know about that," said Nate. "You still ended up a G-man."

"You're supposed to be sleeping," Brad pointed out.

"Bossy fucker," said Nate, tilting his seat back to hopefully get some shut-eye.

***

When they got back to Boston, Brad had three texts and two voicemails from Ray that he didn't bother listening to. Since two of the texts made reference to eloping, Brad didn't have the patience left and deleted all of it from his phone as they sat in the parking garage at the office.

"Fucking Ray," he muttered.

"Where is he?" Nate asked, undoing his seatbelt and rubbing at his eye. He looked marginally more human, anyway. "We should share the details we got from Evan Stafford."

"Probably gone home by now," said Brad, texting Ray anyway. His phone hummed with a reply almost immediately. "Or not," he amended, seeing _still in the fucking lab dude_ on the screen.

Nate leaned in to peer at the phone. "Pappy does this sometimes," he said, completely unsurprised. "Let's go rescue them." He grabbed at his seatbelt again.

"What if I want to leave him there?" Brad asked.

"That's your business, but I don't want Walt ruined," said Nate. "He's got potential."

Brad conceded that and started the engine again, letting Nate direct him to Harvard.

When they walked into the lab, they were greeted with the sight of Walt sprawled across an antique couch, reading a first-year physics textbook, and Rudy sitting on top of a cleared lab bench in some kind of yoga pose.

"Good evening," said Rudy. "How was your day?"

"Long," said Brad, walking past Rudy to shove Walt's legs off the couch and collapse into it. He peered over Walt's shoulder; he was on a chapter about covalency.

"Your energies feel unbalanced," said Rudy, who had changed poses and now had his eyes closed while Nate frowned at him. "Do you have trouble getting restful sleep?"

"What if I do?" Nate asked.

Rudy opened his eyes and looked between Brad and Nate; one eyebrow quirked. "I could share some tantric sex tips. You'll never sleep badly again, brother."

Brad blinked; Nate stared at Rudy, shot a glance at Brad, and then went back to staring at Rudy. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

"It's all about being in tune with your personal energy," Rudy began. "It's a gateway into tantric ritual through the ecstatic pleasure of the body and soul together. Once you embrace the Divine Consciousness, you'll experience sensation on a whole new level. It's like being reborn, Nate."

Brad shot a sideways glance at Walt, who was looking attentive. Possibly making mental notes. So much for all that potential.

"I don't think I need any tantric sex tips, Rudy," Nate finally managed. "Thanks."

Rudy shrugged, bending down in a way no one should be capable of. "If the chemical hit of a regular orgasm doesn't help to achieve relaxation anymore, some spiritual readjustment might be just what you need. I'm here if you need advice," said Rudy warmly. "That goes for you too, Brad."

"What's this about you helping Brad and Nate have orgasms?" Ray asked, walking out of an adjoining room with his usual impeccable timing.

Brad stood up. "Ray, shut up. We just came to keep you in the loop on the case. We were interviewing a suspect we pulled in on the radiation poisoning lead."

"Is that what they're calling it now?" Ray asked. "Tell me in a minute, I want to hear more of Rudy's sex tips."

Brad clapped a hand over Ray's mouth. "I have been awake since three o'clock this morning and drove to Pennsylvania and back today," he warned.

Ray nodded sadly and Brad cautiously removed his hand.

"So did you crack him like an egg or what?" Ray asked, dropping onto the couch beside Walt, who'd put his textbook down. "Sometimes we call Brad the Iceman," Ray told Walt conspiratorially, "because when he interviews people he gets this _look_ , grown men have wet themselves--"

Brad just started speaking overtop of him. "His name was Evan Stafford and he gave us the names of the other two guys on the team. Anthony Jacks and James Chaffin. They're all ex-Marines."

"Do we have enough to go knock on their doors?" Ray asked, finally acting like someone who deserved his job. "If we know who it was?"

"No," said Nate. "We haven't recovered enough evidence from the scenes and the confession won't be enough to bring them in. Besides that, Stafford doesn't even know what it was that they stole."

"He didn't see what was in the boxes?" Ray asked.

"Jacks is their leader," said Nate, "and apparently he handed the boxes over to whoever was paying them to do the jobs, unopened. No one else has contact with this guy, according to Stafford."

"Convenient," said Ray. Brad had always known he liked Ray for a reason.

"Regardless," said Nate, "that was all we could get out of him."

"Well, what the fuck good is that?" said Ray. "We're going to have to catch the other two red-handed, and that's assuming they're planning to steal anything else now that they're down two guys. We have two names that are worth jack shit and we don't even know what they took."

"We could task agents to sit on Chaffin and Jacks once we find them," said Nate. "Then we'll know if they make another move or have more contact with whoever they're working for."

Brad was shaking his head before Nate finished speaking. "If they're any good, and the lack of incriminating evidence at most of the crime scenes suggests that they are, putting a tail on either of them won't do shit. Assuming they haven't gone to ground completely, either they'll notice they have a tail or Jacks has safety measures when it comes to contact with their employer. We got lucky finding Stafford."

"How many boxes have they gotten already?" Rudy asked. Brad turned to look at him and saw he'd gotten off the lab bench; he was standing behind them with a water bottle in hand.

"Four," said Nate. "In four different cities."

"Is there some link between these boxes that makes you think they want more?" Rudy wandered over to one of the laptops and switched it on. "Or are you guessing?"

"We're guessing," said Ray. "The box numbers follow some gay-ass math sequence or whatever, and Brad here thinks that's significant."

"Huh. Which gay-ass math sequence would that be?" Rudy grinned, opening up a document and causing a printer across the lab to start spitting out pages of notes or something. He and Pappy had clearly been committing scientific shenanigans recently.

"It was the Fibonacci Sequence," said Brad.

Rudy, who'd been reaching for the notes he'd just printed, somehow managed to miss the paper tray. "Pardon me?"

"All four boxes," Nate confirmed. "We're not sure if that means there are more or not, but it's possible."

"What banks were these at?" Rudy asked sharply. "Do you have that information with you?"

Nate's hand moved to rest on his messenger bag, apparently by reflex. "It's classified information," he said cautiously, eyeing Rudy who was getting into his space now.

"I need to see it," Rudy insisted. "Right now."

Brad moved to intervene. "What the fuck, man, chill out."

Nate took a step back, holding Rudy at arm's length. Brad saw that he was fighting with himself over it, and then Nate sighed and moved to set his bag down on a nearby stool. "Hang on," he said. "It's all in here."

Rudy took the handful of theft reports from Nate as soon as he had them out of the bag and wandered off a few steps to look through them. Brad's hand was still hovering in front of his chest, ready to go for his shoulder holster (although he wasn't entirely sure whether he really meant to shoot Rudy). Nate was frowning at Rudy's back as he shuffled through the papers silently. Walt and Ray hung back near the couch, both on their feet. The world hung on what Rudy would do next.

His shoulders were slumped when he turned back to face them, handing Nate back the theft reports with a slow, defeated kind of gesture. "I'm sorry I snapped at you, my man," he said, sounding hollow. "Here you go. Thank you."

"Rudy, what the fuck?" Ray demanded.

"There are more boxes," said Rudy. "Two more. One is in Boston and one is in Dallas."

Nate looked down at the reports. "How do you...?"

"They're mine," said Rudy. "I opened them."

***

"It was right in front of us the whole _time_?" Ray was shouting. "Why does everything lead back to this motherfucker?"

"What in the hell are you all yelling about?" Pappy's voice preceded him into the lab; he'd been out, apparently getting Chinese food. "Rude, you look like you seen your mama's ghost."

Rudy pulled his face out of his hands but kept sagging in the computer chair he'd collapsed into. "Pappy," he said, sounding morose. "It's all catching up with me. I tried to repent. I tried to find a new path but it's all catching up."

"What the hell is he talking about, Nate?" Pappy dropped his food container on his pantry cart and set his hands on his hips.

"Rudy's the owner of all the safe deposit boxes that've been broken into," said Nate, dragging his hand through his hair. Brad abruptly remembered that he was approaching twenty-four hours with no sleep, and Nate didn't seem to be faring much better.

Pappy went to lay a hand on Rudy's shoulder. "What's in the boxes?" he asked quietly.

"Our notes."

Pappy's hand dropped back to his side.

"Oh, Paps, what are we going to do?"

"What notes?" Brad demanded. He couldn't think what they could possibly be notes about that would merit the effort of stealing them, and he was increasingly thinking he didn't want to know.

"When we were at Massive Dynamic," said Rudy, "we basically ran Research & Development. We were doing a lot of weapons contracts in those days."

"For our military," Nate prompted. "Like the machine that put the truck through the pavement, right?"

Pappy snorted and went to grab his dinner again. "Our government. The UK. China. Saudi Arabia." He paused in digging his chopsticks through the container. "North Korea," he added thoughtfully.

"Fuck's sake," said Brad without thinking.

"They're one of the biggest corporations there is," said Pappy with a shrug. "You don't get to be that big by turning down people with money."

"They have no conscience," said Rudy. "And whatever they told us to make, we made. Sometimes they didn't tell us who it was for but we contributed to evil intentions all the same. Pappy left me in '05 to take that teaching position at MIT--"

" _Left you_? You're a grown man and you didn't need me hanging around to keep you on task! Anyway, they told me it was tenure-track."

Rudy waved him off. "It's in the past, Pap. I stayed behind but my uneasiness with my life path was growing by then. I didn't like what I was doing, what I was supporting with my work, so finally I left the company about ten months later."

"That's when he went to be a yogi," said Pappy helpfully.

"I decided to pursue my budding interest in the Dao and applied to an ashram," said Rudy peaceably. "I spent a year in India and then I came back to practice in my homeland." Rudy paused, apparently collecting himself. "But I couldn't just leave Massive Dynamic--it wasn't that simple. They were just going to pick up where Pappy and I had left off and continue our terrible work, and I couldn't find peace in apathy. So I took all of our research notes with me."

"All of them?" said Brad and Pappy at the same time.

"Five three-inch binders' worth. It took me three weeks to spirit them all away without anyone noticing. I refilled the binders with blank paper."

"And I always thought you were nuts not to keep that shit digital," muttered Pappy.

"But you kept them," said Nate blankly. "You didn't destroy them or anything."

Rudy looked away. "I should have; I see that now. But it was years of work. Good work, even if it was being applied to making bigger bombs that killed more people in less time. It didn't have to be used that way, Nate. The same technology that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki also gave us safe, clean energy that powers most of the world. A great many wonderful things we use in peace were developed for war." He shrugged. "It's all about the intentions of those who have the knowledge. Massive Dynamic and its clients had negative intentions."

"So you took these notes and put them in safe deposit boxes?" said Nate.

"I split them up carefully," said Rudy. He glanced at Brad. "The Fibonacci numbers helped me remember which boxes I used."

"Jesus Christ, Rudy," said Pappy, sounding tired. "How the fuck did anyone find out about them?"

"I don't know, Paps."

"Is Massive Dynamic responsible for the thefts?" Walt piped up.

"Nah," said Pappy. "They'd have been within their rights to just sue Rudy for them. We'd signed enough of our lives away to their damn lawyers when we worked there that we probably gave them written permission. Frankly, I'm a little surprised they _haven't_ sued. Maybe they couldn't be sure what you took."

"Maybe they couldn't find me," said Rudy.

"They did send people to ask me where you went. Told 'em I didn't know and gave them the impression I didn't care."

"They came after you?" Rudy asked, wide-eyed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen."

Pappy shrugged. "I got a free dinner out of it. They said something about all our notes, come to think of it, but I just denied everything."

Rudy smiled. "You're a good man, Pappy."

"Yes, I am." Pappy took a bite of rice.

Nate rubbed his hand over his face. "All right," he said. "So someone has contracted a bunch of ex-Marines to use expensive, untested technology to steal Rudy and Pappy's old research notes and they only have two boxes left to hit. We have to assume, if Tony Espera was recruited late, that they can find more manpower at will and have plans to steal those boxes, too." Nate pointed at Rudy. "I need the banks and box numbers. We'll get Dallas to set up agents at that bank and we'll have a team watch the one here in Boston. I also need you to try and remember what the hell was in those notes that would make whoever this is want them so badly."

Pappy blanched. "Oh, god, Nate, there was so much stuff in there."

"Not just the contract work but our own projects, too."

"We had some weird shit going on."

Nate took a deep breath. "Figure it out. Make me a list. Ferrando's going to want to know what we're looking at, here. Meanwhile, we need to get those teams set up so we can try and catch these guys in the act and have something concrete to nail them with." He turned to Ray and Walt. "You guys keep Ferrando and me posted on what's going down here. I'm going home to sleep for a few hours while I still can. Brad, you're driving." Nate grabbed his messenger bag, turned and started for the door of the lab while everyone stared at his back.

"Yes, sir," said Brad, nodding a goodbye to the others before jogging after Nate.

***

Brad woke up from a coma at around ten in the morning to stripes of sunlight from the blinds hitting his face, and Nate sitting on the edge of the couch cushion. He looked like he was still only half-awake and was holding out a coffee cup.

"Sorry about last night," he said. "I was kind of an asshole when we left Harvard."

Brad levered himself into a sitting position and took the coffee; it wasn't necessary but he wasn't going to turn down a good peace offering when it was right in his face like that. "I've taken orders before," he pointed out. "Sometimes they made no sense and I had no choice anyway. You don't need to apologize for getting shit done."

"I don't enjoy it," said Nate. "But it's good that I'm forgiven."

Brad sipped his coffee.

"Because we've got a long day ahead of us again," Nate continued, giving Brad's knee a friendly slap through the blankets before he stood up.

Brad was left to stare fixedly at the wall as the shower started. He looked down at his coffee and smirked.

Later, of course, he would realize he should have known all along that the team of agents Nate had talked about sending to cover the safe deposit box in Boston would include Nate.

Ray met them as soon as they got off the elevator at the field office. He had a case of the crazy-eye.

"Are you hitting the No-Doz, Person?" Brad asked, taking a step away to maintain his personal space.

"Like a motherfucker, Brad," said Ray. "I haven't slept. Anthony Jacks bought a standby plane ticket from Baltimore to Dallas last night. His flight should be getting in in the next hour or so; Dallas is going to try and pick him up at the arrival gates. They're supposed to call us when they've got him."

A feeling began to well up inside Brad that he was cautiously prepared to call hope. Nate sidled past Ray to head for his desk, talking over his shoulder.

"Did we get a team arranged to cover the Citizens Bank?"

"We got two guys in a van out there," said Ray.

Nate shook his head at his desk as he dropped his bag on the floor.

"What?" said Ray. "They're going to Dallas. Aren't they?"

"Maybe," said Nate. "But it seems too easy." He left his bag at his desk and headed for the elevator again, passing between Brad and Ray.

"Where the fuck are you going?" Ray demanded.

Nate turned on his heel. "I'm going to State Street to take a look at the Citizens Bank." He looked uncomfortable. "Something feels wrong."

Brad studied Nate's face. He had strong faith in hunches. "Let's go," he said, closing the distance to Nate.

"You don't have to come with me."

Brad arched an eyebrow at him. Of course he did. If Nate wanted him around then Nate was stuck with him. "I trust your judgment," he said.

Ray made a gagging sound.

"Ray, on the other hand, can stay here and man the phones," Brad went on.

"What?" Ray squeaked.

Nate ignored him, looking up at Brad. "Are you sure? I might just be crazy."

Brad reached past him to hit the button for the elevator. "Maybe," he said. "But I'm still coming with you."

***

The Citizens Bank on State Street was on the ground floor of an office tower next to a little outdoor space, paved with bricks. Brad scanned the crowd as they drove past but it was all just people doing normal things for the time of day: wearing suits, eating lunch, reading, texting. Nate illegally parked behind the surveillance van in an abuse of government official liberties that Brad admired, and they knocked on the rear door and flashed their badges for admittance into the smelly nerve centre of the operation.

"Gents," said Nate, ducking and moving aside to allow Brad in behind him. "This is Agent Brad Colbert. Brad, these are Agents Lovell and Holsey."

Lovell nodded; Holsey was listening intently to whatever was on his giant headphones.

"All's quiet," said Lovell. "Of course, we expected that."

Nate gave their spread an annoyed look and Brad could see why: they were basically watching the comings and goings at the bank entrance and that was all.

"This setup is completely ineffective," said Nate.

"There's only the two of us and we think they're in Dallas anyway," objected Lovell.

Instead of answering, Nate glared at the tiny TV monitor one more time and then hopped out of the back of the van. Brad hastened to follow, giving the other two a vague wave before he shut the rear door behind them.

"Where are you," he started, but Nate was glancing up and down the road before jogging across it to the bank, his jacket fluttering in the breeze against his back. Brad caught up to him in front of the bank, but instead of going inside Nate jogged around the building to the main entrance of the office tower.

"We need the building manager," he said to the receptionist in the marble-and-glass lobby, flashing his badge at her as Brad caught up.

They were in his office in five minutes. Nate asked for building plans that included the public works structures, and the building manager stared at him as Brad began, slowly, to cotton on.

"I need," said Nate in a tone of waning patience, "to see where the sewers and tunnels are relative to this building. Now, please."

The building manager scratched the back of his neck, staring at Nate and Brad and probably thinking about their badges, and then got up to go dig through the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the corner. He nearly emptied it before he came up with some yellowing rolls of paper.

Nate plucked them out of the man's hands. "Can I?" he asked, gesturing at the man's desk with the rolls of paper even as he was already moving to spread them out. "I hate maps," he said after a second of looking at it.

Brad could see the shape of the building emerging in the lines of the drawing. "Here," he said, edging into Nate's space without stopping to think about it. He pointed over Nate's shoulder at the centre of the drawing. "This is this building. North is," he paused, orienting himself. "That way. So the bank's over here." He dragged his finger along the page to one corner of the building. "These are sewers, with access points." He frowned, willing the picture to come together in a tactical way.

The building manager had leaned over the desk with them. "That doesn't have the subway tunnels on it," he said after a moment. "It's older. They go through here." He dragged a finger along one thick roadway marking. "The nearest station is State, right here." He poked the map right outside the building.

"That's it," said Nate suddenly. "It's the subway tunnel. It has to be."

Brad indulged a moment in gratitude that he wasn't going into any sewers. "Wanna go check it out?"

"Let's go." Nate thanked the building manager, who rolled up his papers and crammed them back into the file cabinet as they left.

"Tell me I'm not crazy and this is a legitimate lead we're investigating," said Nate as they burst back out into the afternoon sunshine.

Brad pondered the request as they located the subway station entrance and started walking briskly toward it. "You're not any crazier than you were when you woke up this morning," he finally settled on.

"This is a legitimate lead, then," Nate repeated.

Brad said, "They're Marines. I was a Marine. If they're running their own mission, or heist or whatever we want to call it, then this is most likely what I myself would choose to do."

"You have no idea how relieved that makes me," said Nate, pulling open the door to the station and letting Brad through ahead of him. Brad thought about taking the safety off his weapon as they negotiated the crowds and flashed badges past the turnstiles, but the number of people milling around made him uneasy.

Nate seemed to understand where he was going; he led the way through the station, looking up and around at the ceiling and walls and frowning as they moved. Finally, he stopped on an Orange Line platform.

"This is the closest we can get to the bank without going into the actual tunnels," he said.

Brad looked around. "I see. There are cameras."

"They're obviously making their move after the trains stop running," said Nate, and off Brad's look he elaborated, "After one in the morning."

"Excuse me," mumbled a large man in grey coveralls and a hard hat; Brad moved out of his way and he disappeared through one of the maintenance access doors. Transit Authority repair guy.

Nate was staring at the door as it closed behind the man. "They have access tunnels to get at parts of the track without getting hit by trains," he said.

"That's handy."

Nate shot him a wry look and then moved closer to the edge of the platform to peer down into the tunnel. It was a four-foot drop and the tracks were tucked up close to the platform by necessity, but the space didn't widen much as the tracks disappeared into the tunnel itself.

"I doubt there's much room to move equipment through here," said Brad, peering into the dark after Nate. Warm air ruffled his hair; there was a train approaching the platform. "I wish we knew how big their gear was."

"Regardless, I don't think they're going this route," said Nate thoughtfully. "The cameras, if nothing else. It's a pain in the ass to hack or cut the feed." He stepped back behind the yellow line and shouted over the noise of the train pulling into the station. "They're getting into the maintenance access," he yelled. "We need to check it out."

Brad considered their options as the train sat out its stop and then pulled away into the tunnel with a fresh load of people. "We'll have to call the Transit Authority to get in, won't we?"

"And I need to call Ferrando to get more agents out here; I want to double or triple the surveillance and move them into the station," said Nate. He glanced around. "I won't get a signal down here."

"More agents might scare them off," Brad pointed out. "We want to catch them in the act so we can prosecute, don't we?" He sighed, feeling pressure build behind his left eye. "We should just make Rudy empty the box."

"We can't do that," Nate protested. "They might have someone watching the vault to see if that happens, especially now that we've compromised them. Besides, there's a slim chance they don't know the boxes are specifically Rudy's." Nate shrugged. "I don't want to see him in the line of fire for whoever is this anxious to get his and Pappy's work."

"What, you think they'll decide the man himself is a better haul?"

"Brad, is that any less reasonable a conclusion than all of the trouble they've been going to to steal the boxes?"

"Fuck," said Brad. That probably summed it up.

Nate looked back to the access door. Then he looked back down the tunnel, the way the trains came. The next one was due in eight minutes.

"We don't have time to fuck around with getting more people down here and scaring off any watch these guys have set up," he said finally. "I want to go check out the spot they'll be using to access the bank vault."

Brad cast a glance at the locked door but Nate was striding for the edge of the platform.

"Nate!" he called, but Nate was hopping down onto the tracks with a crunch of gravel. Brad whipped out his phone but had no signal to call for help to drag Nate out. He only had one option, and he had less than eight minutes to see it through safely.

"Fuck's sake," he muttered, dropping off of the platform and hitting the gravel with a knees-bent crunch. He drew his weapon and stepped into the gloom; Nate was standing just inside the shadows, and flipped on a flashlight that he held across his own weapon.

"I take back what I said earlier," said Brad as they crept into the darkness, following the lancing beam of Nate's flashlight.

"What was that?" Nate asked; he whispered but his voice still carried in the tunnel.

"You're fucking batshit."

"Thanks, Brad."

Brad's lizard brain was shouting in its tiny voice about the train that would be hurtling at their backs surely any moment, but he kept calm as they made their way slowly through the tunnel. It had to be about five minutes before they reached an access on the bank's side of the train tracks. He slipped in front of Nate, keeping out of the flashlight beam but taking point as they turned and breathing in slowly through his nose, then just as slowly out through his mouth. The flashlight beam hit a far wall of rough concrete, and Brad heard a noise that definitely didn't come from him, Nate, or an approaching train. It sounded like a boot scraping on concrete.

He abruptly remembered the maintenance guy, and then the yelling started.

"Who the fuck is that?" shouted a deep voice.

"Stafford?" called another.

Nate's flashlight beam hit the face of the man in the coveralls and he called, "FBI! Show us your hands!"

"Fuck," said the man in the coveralls, the owner of the deep voice, and the movement he made was not to put his hands up, it was to draw. Brad stepped back to shield Nate, sighted and fired; the gunshot was deafening in the access tunnel. He heard a grunt and sighted again; the big guy (Brad was willing to bet it was Jacks, since he looked like a Manimal if anyone did) was holding his arm. Brad had winged him. He fired again and Jacks jerked back; Brad's ears rang from the reports of his weapon, Nate's and what the two Marines across the tunnel were carrying, but he could hear the building roar of an approaching train.

It was loud enough he could barely hear Nate shouting or the sound of the shot that coincided with Brad's falling backwards suddenly. His momentum had carried him most of the way down to the floor before he realized it, and the wind knocked out of him when he landed on his back.

"Brad!" he heard faintly over the noise of the train. Something was running down his side. The flashlight beam dimmed and then everything was black.

***

Brad woke up to beeping, which was never a good sign.

Neither was the white ceiling interrupted by curtain tracks or the light blue walls that he saw when he cracked his watery eyes open.

"I fucking hate hospitals," he breathed. His voice was scratchy.

"I'm not a fan of them either," said Nate from his right.

Brad blinked his eyes clear; Nate was hunched in a plastic chair, his tie loosened and shirt collar undone. He had bags under his eyes and his smile was tight and tired.

"We were in a train tunnel," Brad remembered, clearing his throat. Nate held out a cup of ice chips; Brad hated eating ice chips. He'd suffer. "There was gunfire," he went on, pushing the cup away. He looked down at the blankets tucked up around his waist.

"You were shot in the side," said Nate. "The bullet missed your important organs but you had surgery and stitches. This is your third day here."

Brad huffed at that and started trying to get his arms under himself to sit up. Nate held out the bed controls and Brad winced at the tightness in his side as the bed slowly pushed him into a sitting position.

"I am on the really good drugs," he realized.

"The best," said Nate. "You woke up this morning, but I bet you don't remember it."

Brad was suspicious.

It must have shown on his face, because Nate snorted. "Ray was here. He brought you these flowers." He pointed at a hideous pink and orange arrangement on the table beside Brad's bed. It hurt to look directly at them. "Then he tried to tell you they were from me. You laughed him out of the room and then a nurse came in to yell at us."

"Those flowers are a fucking eyesore."

"It appears that I have disgusting taste," agreed Nate. "Although I guess as a gesture it means he likes me. I wasn't sure."

"Oh?" Brad shifted, trying to get comfortable. He felt a twinge from his side and stopped moving.

"He's been singing bits of _Jolene_ at me for the past few days," said Nate. "I didn't know what that meant."

Changing the subject from Ray's mental workings seemed like a good plan; Brad was uncomfortable enough. "What happened in the tunnel?"

"After you... went down, I took out both of them and then used a maintenance phone in the tunnel to call for backup. It was Jacks and Chaffin in the tunnel; Jacks was dead at the scene but Chaffin survived for questioning. Unfortunately, what little he probably knows in the first place he isn't telling us." Nate gave him a wry grin. "When you get better, maybe you can come glare at him until he talks."

"You were okay? And the boxes are safe?" he added as an afterthought.

"I was fine." Nate shifted in his chair and looked down at his hands. "We recovered the contents of the box at Citizens Bank without error," he said.

Brad's brain worked sluggishly to follow that train of thought. "Dallas?"

Nate gnawed on the inside of his lip. "A different team hit the box in Dallas while we were distracted by cleaning up the scene here."

Brad swore and glared at the wall on the other side of the bed. Nate's tug on his forearm dragged his attention back.

"Yeah, they were well organized and got around us. But Rudy and Pappy recovered the notes from the box here in Boston and are piecing together what was stolen," he said gently. "The bad guys lost some crucial information with that box, apparently."

"They still have, what, five out of six," said Brad.

Nate shook his head. "We're working on it. We'll get what we can out of Chaffin and go from there. But your first priority is to get cleared to get out of the hospital."

Brad looked down at his arm; Nate's hand was still resting on it. "I've never been shot before," he said. "I hear it takes forever to get back to a hundred percent."

"You've never been shot before? Even after Iraq and Afghanistan?" Nate asked, sounding amazed. His hand didn't move.

"I've been shot _at_ ," said Brad. "But I'm normally good at not being hit. And normally the fuckers shooting at me are trained by the other side. No one shoots like a Marine."

"Figures," said Nate. "Sorry, Brad."

"I made it through two wars and years with the Bureau without taking a bullet, but a week with you lands me in the hospital." Brad looked down at Nate's hand on his arm again, took in his worried lean over the bed. "Is this how you normally woo your potential new partners, Agent Fick?"

Nate grinned, slow and wide. "I have to say that normally my methods are more traditional, Agent Colbert."

"Like what? Dinner and a movie?"

Nate's hand dragged down his arm until their fingers touched. "Maybe when you're out of the hospital." He paused. "We can't rush your healing."

Brad shifted against the pillows, closing his fingers around Nate's without really thinking about it. God, morphine was amazing. "Well, I'll accept now anyway."

Nate raised an eyebrow. "Ferrando will be thrilled. I'll have to keep him and the transfer paperwork away until you're in your right mind, though."

"I'll trust you to have my six," said Brad, feeling warm and barely noticing the twinges in his side anymore. "And I like Italian food."

"Noted. But hurry up and get off the drugs, will you? We have things to discuss."

"Like what?"

"I can't let a convalescing man keep sleeping on my couch," said Nate matter-of-factly. "It just wouldn't be right."

Brad gave that some thought. "How big's your bed? I'm good at sharing."

Nate chuckled. "It's big enough for sharing."

"Problem solved," said Brad. "Next?"

"Maybe it's not that simple," said Nate.

"Maybe it is," said Brad. And maybe it was all the drugs talking, but in that moment he could see how it _could_ be that simple. Brad was starting to think he might like Boston after all.

That part, he mused as Nate's hand stayed warm against his, might have actually been the drugs.

 

THE END


End file.
